Eli M. Black

Elihu Menashe Black ( born April 9, 1921 in Poland as Elihu Menashe Blachowitz; † February 3, 1975 in New York) and was an American investment banker and manager. He was from 1969 head of the United Brands Company.

His son, Leon Black in 1990 founded the Investment and holding company Apollo Management.

Life

Black came as a child in the U.S. and was in Woodmere (New York) three and a half years Rabbi. Then he made a retraining as an investment banker.

In 1954 he was elected president of the American Seal -Kap Company that manufactured packaging equipment for plastic bottle caps. Black left the company after its renaming in AMK Telegraph shortcut and made it to the holding company. He bought the John Morrell & Co., a company from the meat packing industry.

In 1969 he acquired the United Fruit Company. He did not realize until after purchasing a lower capital base of the company, as he had assumed. He left the United Fruit Company, rename in United Brands Company. In October 1973, OPEC increased oil prices and concerts in September 1974 destroyed Hurricane Fifi in Honduras Orlene many banana plantations.

On the morning of February 3, 1975, Black went to his office in the 44th floor of the Pan Am Building in Manhattan, opened the curtains, smashed the window with his briefcase and jumped into the Park Avenue.

As the United States Securities and Exchange Commission investigated the crash, they revealed that he had not reported useful expenses in the amount of $ 1.25 million to Oswaldo López Arellano, the then President of Honduras from reptiles funds in the balance sheet of United Brands. The procedure was referred to in the press as Banana gate. The money had been instructed to a Swiss bank account. The account had been opened by the Honduran economy minister, José Ramos Abraham Bennaton. For the Parliament-approved increase in the export tax for United Brands Company has not been implemented. Due to the reduced tax to the State of Honduras, the United Brands Company saved approximately 7.5 million USD.

Further research showed that the United Brands Company in the early 1970s further 0.75 million USD had useful expenses paid to a European civil servants and thus restrictions on the export of bananas United Brands Company could be averted.

Blacks jumping out the window was the model for the film Hudsucker - Der große Sprung.